Joe Soucheray: Hey, Washington, is anyone in charge out there?

Maybe it is just me, a small player after all, out here in what used to be called flyover land, but I wonder if we haven't reached the point of this country, certainly this government, becoming unglued. I have been reading stories all week that used to inspire college kids to at least light candles, play Neil Young records and bang on drums.

My favorite story involves the Justice Department looking at the telephone records of Associated Press reporters and editors. Have you followed that one? Kids? Anyone? Anyone? The Justice Department subpoenaed the phone records of journalists, claiming that it did so because, apparently, somebody leaked sensitive information to the AP, what or to whom we are not told.

Now, we have been told by Eric Holder, the attorney general, that he didn't personally authorize those subpoenas, but he did say that the leak concerned "grave'' national security interests. In fact, according to Holder, it was one of the two or three most serious national security threats he had become aware of since he became a prosecutor in 1976.

Wow. It must have been a whopper of a threat. For all we know we have been saved from something terrible. He did not say specifically how the disclosure of information about the plot had endangered Americans.

Federal officials have said investigators are trying to hunt down the sources of information for a May 7, 2012, AP story that disclosed details of a CIA operation in Yemen to stop an airliner bomb plot around the anniversary of the killing of Osama bin Laden.

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The probe is being run out of the U.S. attorney's office in the District of Columbia.

But the White House, meaning President Barack Obama, claims it didn't know anything about it, meaning those subpoenaed phone calls, and, we are to deduce, the threat itself.

I am being asked to believe that the highest law-enforcement authorities in the nation detected a security threat that Holder called "a very grave leak.'' OK. I am also asked to believe that it was so potentially consequential to the safety of the American public that they took the extraordinarily bold step of prying into the telephone calls made by reporters and editors who work for the Associated Press. Apparently, it involved more than 20 telephone lines assigned to AP and its journalists, including main offices.

But the White House doesn't know about it.

If this concern was so grave, why wouldn't the president have been told? Put another way, why hasn't Obama's reaction been one of anger at Holder? Something isn't right. The graver the threat, the more urgently a president would be told. Try to spin it any other way. I can understand the president not being told about a drug bust in Des Moines, Iowa, but a grave threat to national security seems to be exactly what he is supposed to be told about.

If I were the president and my attorney general didn't tell me about one of the two or three greatest threats to the United States in his 37-year career, I'd can the guy.

My second favorite story -- using the word "favorite," I guess, is like using the laughter of affectation --- is the IRS story. Somebody finally told Obama that he should be angry that the IRS used its power to more carefully scrutinize conservative organizations. Sure enough, he came out and said he was angry and a head rolled. The acting commissioner of the IRS, Steven Miller, who as deputy commissioner was aware of the agency's efforts to snoop where it shouldn't be snooping, was bounced.

It is more plausible that the White House can claim that they also didn't know anything was amiss at the IRS. The IRS has thousands and thousands of employees looking for your money. Obama cannot be responsible for some IRS wildcatter in a Cincinnati office deciding to more carefully grill a tea party group.

In fact, to quote from a New York Times story: "Under IRS rules, the agency's chief counsel, William Wilkins, reports to the Treasury Department's general counsel. But the IRS statement Wednesday (May 15) said the notation on which the report relied was referring to the chief counsel's office, which employs 1,600 lawyers, not Wilkins himself."

I guess, like Holder, Wilkins didn't have anything to do with anything.

Well, it's all just too much, too many people, too many layers, too many lawyers, too many backdoor excuses, too much government.

And the president doesn't have anything to do with anything, doesn't know about these things.